“Two week small group tour of Tanzania featuring basic camping, Serengeti safaris, mountain walks and cultural interaction with local communities. Four days on Zanzibar rounds off the tour rather nicely.”

Description of Tanzania small group safari

This two week small group safari in Tanzania takes travellers on the road to Zanzibar via some of East Africa’s top settings for wildlife including Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Crater.

Basic campsites and 6-person safari vehicles allow you to become immersed in Tanzania’s incredible plains and mountainous regions with walking tours in the Usambara Mountains and the foothills of Kilimanjaro allowing for untold adventures to freely unfold.

From the farming villages and markets of Marangu to the chance to meet local Chagga communities and learn about charitable children’s projects in Moshi, this two week tour of Tanzania features a great blend of cultural enlightenment and classic safari experiences.

Four final days on the spice island of Zanzibar provide an amazing opportunity to relax, snorkel and indulge your senses with the gentle lapping waves of the Indian Ocean bound to stay long in the memory even after your tan has finally faded.

Itinerary alterations for 2019As of January 2019 this Tanzania small group safari will miss out Marangu and Mshiri village en-route to Mto Wa Mbu and the Usambara Mountains. The length of the tour will then be 12 days instead of 13. Departure dates will still be the same but the tour will complete a day earlier.

Travel Team

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Small group adventure holiday

This is a 'small group adventure' - on this particular group trip you'll be with a maximum of 31 like minded travellers and you'll have a group leader with you. Whether you are travelling alone or with friends it's good value, and a great way to meet new people! While itineraries are pre-planned there is some flexibility and you'll have plenty of privacy. This trip will appeal to travellers of all ages who enjoy meeting people from other parts of the world as well as seeing new places!

Responsible tourism

Responsible tourism: Tanzania small group safari

Environment

We’re all for zero contact, zero interaction experiences with wildlife. This trip offers travellers the opportunity to see wildlife in their natural habitat at the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Crater. Our leaders are trained to ensure travellers follow a few simple guidelines; don’t call out to animals, whistle or try to get their attention – noise disturbs them and stresses them out – just let them do their thing. Our drivers and guides also know never to use their vehicles to get an animal to move or drive off-road to get closer to the action.

In an effort to reduce single-use plastics on this trip we provide reusable cloth bags to all our travellers. It’s easy to use plastic excessively, especially in the hot months, and so we encourage our travellers to buy large 5-10 litre bottles rather than multiple small water bottles. There are also large vessels onboard our overland vehicles that dispense water for those in need.

Water is a precious commodity in this part of the world. Our trained tour leaders are well versed in advising travellers on initiatives to manage their water consumption. We also ask that our travellers treat this scarce resource with the utmost respect.

Unfortunately, on the vast majority of this itinerary, using local transport is not reliable or feasible and so we use private, locally owned transport instead. We ensure our vehicles/fleets are well maintained and fuel-efficient. We also endeavour to include a range of other local transport options such as canoe where possible.

This trip is run by our own local East African operator who shares our commitment to responsible travel, from waste and water management to ensuring we leave as minimal a footprint as possible. Our local team are trained on our global responsible travel policies and practices. We also use a range of other local suppliers for different activities throughout this two-country itinerary.

As a company we are committed to carbon offsetting. The main sources of carbon emission from our trips (transport, accommodation and waste) are assessed and offset into renewable energy projects. We’ve offset over 250,000 tonnes of carbon emissions from our trips and offices worldwide, including over 40,000 tonnes of carbon in 2016. Plus, part of the cost of your trip is dedicated to carbon offsetting.

Community

An important part of travel is mixing with the locals and experiencing “real life” in your chosen destination. On this trip we stay only in locally owned hotels or guesthouses that are locally staffed, enabling the money you spend to stay within that community. We source local activities which we believe are sustainable to the economy in that they allow the flow of income from visitors to be distributed to a greater audience, rather than remain concentrated with tourism providers. This could be as simple as a meal in a small local restaurant, a home-cooked dinner or staying in a small, boutique hotel. Where truck meals are provided we try to source ingredients from a local market wherever we can.

All aspects of this trip (on the ground) are operated by East Africans (most of whom live locally) including all our leaders, vehicle drivers, local site guides and accommodation providers.

Our philosophy is to act local and that means respecting the local traditions by ensuring both men and women are conservatively dressed, with legs and arms covered when entering villages and other small communities. We also take care to form genuine and mutually beneficial relationships with local people. Excellent examples of this include the Lushoto hike and local lunch and the Mto Wa Mbu Village walk and market visit.